It realized it had “become a more attractive target for spammers” and “how distracting it can be” for users, so they decided to “add another weapon to our arsenal: the law.”

TweetAdder was named in the suit, among others. Twitter claimed the defendants were in clear violation of the Twitter Rules. And Twitter sought to shut down these tool providers, deter new ones from popping up and “prevent other spammers from having these services at their disposal.”

Fast forward to this year and we learn that TweetAdder has been updated to comply with Twitter’s terms of service. The main services they removed to put them in compliance is the ability to automatically follow and unfollow, automated @replies and its tweet generator:

Twitter and TweetAdder have mutually agreed upon a final confidential settlement of their legal dispute regarding TweetAdder Software.

TweetAdder Version 3.0 and all prior versions of TweetAdder will no longer be available or supported as of 4/26/2013.

All current TweetAdder users will be required to upgrade to the new version of TweetAdder 4.0 by May 24, 2013. As a reminder, TweetAdder users must comply with Twitter’s Terms of Service.

We are excited about working with Twitter and delivering an innovative solution for businesses and individuals to manage their accounts.

If you’re a current TweetAdder user, you may be worried. But in an email, they share why you shouldn’t be:

While it is easy to assume that TweetAdder4 is less functional because it no longer automatically follows and unfollows, we have carefully developed many new features into the software so that it is actually much more powerful and useful in many ways.

All of the search functions are now much more powerful, and allow you to filter and sort results based on many criteria. The interface is vastly improved, allowing you see pertinent information at a glance, see user icons, and easily find high quality users. The increase in quality greatly outweighs any perceived difference in convenience.

TweetAdder4 also features multiple powerful options for deciding who to unfollow. With previous versions, the only metric was based on if someone followed you back. Now, in addition to that, you can see users who have unfollowed you, who have no profile image, use a foreign language, have a high ratio, are inactive, talkative (spammy users who tweet too often), or quiet (users who are not actively engaged). By unfollowing these lower quality inactive users, and following high quality engaged users, TweetAdder4 allows you to easily increase the quality of users following your account, making your Tweets more effective.

TweetAdder4 is uses the Twitter API & fully complies with the Twitter TOS. This is a huge improvement because you can be confident in using it, and confident in knowing that you are not violating Twitter’s Terms by using it. Use of any software that violates the Twitter TOS (such as with automated following/unfollows) means that you are breaking Twitter’s TOS and you risk account suspension.

In addition to the improvements to the above features, we have added many other improvements across the board. We continue to work on new features, and plan to continue improving TweetAdder far into the future.

How do you manage your Twitter? Share your favorite tools in the comments.